After his return to Germany, he finished his medical training at the Dept of Respiratory Medicine at the Hannover Medical School. Mathias Pletz is the deputy director of the German Competence Network for Community-Acquired Pneumonia (CAPNETZ), a member of the board of directors of the German-Austrian-Swiss Paul-Ehrlich-Society for antimicrobial chemotherapy, and scientific advisor for the German Robert Koch Institute. He has published more than 100 papers on pneumonia, pneumococcal vaccines, respiratory infections, antimicrobial resistance and pharmaco- kinetics of antibiotics in the critically ill. He has also received numerous scientific awards, e.g. the Honor Award Certificate from the CDC, the Kass-Award of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the Respiratory Infections Awards from the ERS. Stefano Aliberti is Assistant Professor in Respiratory Medicine at the University of Milan-Bicocca, Milan, Italy, and consultant at the San Gerardo Hospital in Monza, Italy. He trained at the Institute of Respiratory Diseases at the University of Milan, under the mentorship of Professor Francesco Blasi. During his fellowship, he received research grants to investigate the epidemiology of non-CF bronchiectasis and COPD, and he worked as a visiting research fellow at the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Louisville, KY, USA. He has been an active member of the Community-Acquired Pneumonia Organization (CAPO) international study group since 2006, and a member of the Community-Acquired Pneumonia Inflammatory Study Group (CAPISG). His research and clinical interests are in both acute and chronic respiratory infections, including CAP, non-CF bronchiectasis and atypical mycobacteria. He was awarded the young researcher award in respiratory infections from the ERS in 2007. During the past 10 years, he has been involved in several clinical and translational studies on these topics at both national and international level. Stefano Aliberti has published over 60 articles on CAP in peer-reviewed journals since 2006. He is associate editor of Breathe and the European Journal of Internal Medicine. He has been heavily involved in the ERS, as Secretary of the Respiratory Infection Group and Secretary of the Assembly of Respiratory Infections. Stefano Aliberti viii